J's new friend.

We've read some about babies' vision. A newborn baby's sight is basically optimized to see his mother's face as he is breastfeeding. Babies are most attracted to high contrast, graphical images. They love faces, and J will in fact stare at us for minutes at a time (that's the equivalent of several grown-up days in the life of a newborn).

We've been having a hard time getting J to settle down in his crib, and in fact he spends most of his sleeping time in what we've taken to calling the Magic Nana Chair, a gift from my grandmother that reclines the baby to just the right angle for knocking him out pretty consistently. It is also almost far enough back for pacifier-retention, too, but not quite (it's Magic, not Miraculous -- J's not so good at the pacifier yet).

Today, though, he managed about forty-five non-crying minutes in the crib, thanks to a stuffed green giraffe with a bell inside that J got from my mother. I first put it near J's face in the hope that it would block the pacifier from dropping out of his mouth. When I looked to see if he was sleeping after he'd been quiet for a few seconds, I found him staring, enraptured, into the giraffe's tiny black eyes. Every few seconds I would hear a little jingle as he reached out and smacked the giraffe's face with his little hand.

My son was giving his new best friend a beat-down.